REDD in the news: 24-30 December 2018

REDD-Monitor’s round-up of the week’s news on forests, climate change, and REDD. For regular updates, follow @reddmonitor on Twitter.

24 December 2018

Katowice climate talks: A glass two-thirds full
By Jeffrey Gogo, The Herald, 24 December 2018
The UN climate talks in Katowice, Poland, barely averted disaster after parties ground out a “truncated” deal for the Paris rulebook.
The negotiations had looked to be headed for a cul de sac on the final day Dec. 14, when a combination of some diplomatic craftsmanship from UN secretary general António Guterres and unrelenting pressure from the developing world saved the day — just only.

6 Glimmers of Climate Optimism for the End of a Dark Year
By Eillie Anzilotti, Fast Company, 24 December 2018
In 2018, we learned from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that we have around 30 years to fully decarbonize or risk widespread global devastation from warming and sea-level rise. We also learned that current emissions patterns are nowhere near in line with that goal. Even though the Trump administration tried to bury the U.S.’s own findings on climate, the 1,656-page National Climate Assessment backed up the IPCC report, and called for a doubling down on climate protection policies to prevent damage (which is already underway) to the environment and the country’s infrastructure.

Indonesia may take the long road to recovery after two tsunamis, raging forest fires and an airline crash in 2018
Firstpost, 24 December 2018
Thousands of Indonesian residents on the coastal towns of Sumatra and Java were caught unawares on Saturday night as giant waves crashed into houses, sweeping away cars, uprooting trees and killing over 280 people. The disaster struck without warning and the tsunami was likely caused by undersea landslides from the Anak Krakatau volcanic eruption on the Sunda Strait. This is the second deadly tsunami in this country that was already hit by an air crash, forest fires and floods. Saturday’s incident comes less than three months after nearly 2,000 people were killed in a strong earthquake on the central island of Sulawesi. It also throws light on the vulnerability of Indonesian archipelago and the need to strengthen the nation’s tsunami early warning system.

[Philippines] DENR gears up for El Niño, forest fires
The Daily Guardian, 24 December 2018
While most of us enjoy the mild Holiday climate, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) is up on its toes for the looming dry spell that the El Niño phenomenon will cause in the first three months of 2019.
In a press statement, the DENR-6 regional office said it is activating its Response and Emergency Action Team or REACT in the six provinces of Western Visayas.

25 December 2018

The 10 most intriguing forest stories of 2018
By Genevieve Belmaker and Joseph Charpentier, Mongabay, 25 December 2018
Throughout 2018, forests continued to be threatened and destroyed. From the Amazon, to the Congo Basin, to the Mekong Delta and scores of places in between – journalists reporting for Mongabay filed hundreds of stories about the world’s forests.
Although the significance of any one story is difficult to gauge in the short-term, several Mongabay reports from 2018 stood out. These pieces dealt with illegal timber trafficking, advances in technology-based environmental protections, and human rights protections for the people doing environment-defense work – formal and informal.

India looks to boost forest cover & provide ‘healing touch’ to mining, too: Padmesh Gupta
Nagpur Today, 25 December 2018
The city based global industrialist and the Chairman and Managing Director of Gupta Corporation, Padmesh Gupta, in an interaction with Nagpur Today, said that India is one of the top ten mineral producing countries in the world. However, deforestation caused by mining and other non-forest uses has raised the concerns in recent times. India possesses only 2.4% of the total surface area of the earth. However, it is home to 17% of the world’s population. Therefore, policymakers have been looking for ways to allow surface mines to be ‘healed,’ Gupta said.

26 December 2018

At COP24, Paris proved its worth.
By Manuel Pulgar-Vidal, WWF, 26 December 2018
It was a bruising two weeks at the UN climate talks (COP24) in Katowice, Poland. There were times when it seemed unlikely that we would get the approval of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 1.5°C report, a credible Paris Agreement rulebook, and a strong push for new, more ambitious national emissions targets, known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs), by 2020.

The fastest, cheapest way to curb climate change today
By Topher White (RainforestConnection), Environmental Defense Fund, 26 December 2018
Every year, the destruction of the world’s rainforests releases more CO2 into the air than all the world’s transportation combined — that’s every car, truck, ship and airplane on the planet.
The good news is, while it could take decades to fix the transportation system, we can do something about the rainforests right now.
Rainforest Connection (RFCx) has developed an innovative approach to protecting the rainforests, one that’s helping us keep millions of metric tons of carbon out of the atmosphere today, while preserving indigenous communities and protecting wildlife for tomorrow.

27 December 2018

One Man’s Money-Draining Bet on Climate Change
By Jon Emont, The Wall Street Journal, 27 December 2018
Eleven years ago Dharsono Hartono, a former JPMorgan Chase & Co. banker, spotted what he thought was a new way to make a fortune: climate change.
The plan was to snap up rain forest in Borneo, preserve it from logging and sell carbon credits to big polluting companies in the developed world. The earth’s temperature was rising, and this was a way to profit by confronting the problem.

28 December 2018

There’s Only One Year Left to Hit These 2020 Environmental Pledges
By Adele Peters, Fast Company, 28 December 2018
Nine years ago, Unilever announced that it planned to cut its environmental footprint in half by 2020. If you look at the company’s website today, that goal has quietly been pushed back to 2030. Hundreds of other companies, cities, and countries also set key environmental goals for 2020. With only one year to go, here’s a brief look at how a few of them are faring.

[India] ICFRE holds workshop on REDD
The Pioner, 28 December 2018
The land use based climate mitigation approach of ‘Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation’ (REDD) along with conservation of forest carbon stocks, sustainable management of forests and enhancement of forest carbon stocks collectively known as REDD plus is now widely recognised as one of the climate change mitigation approaches.

[Indonesia] Working with smallholders
Jakarta Post, 28 December 2018
Two separate seminars on plantations in Jakarta recently chose smallholder development as one of the main topics of discussions, notably the implementation of the 2014 Plantation Law that requires plantation companies to help develop smallholders through commercially viable partnerships.
But the seminars, led by former senior officials of the Plantation Directorate General, oil palm smallholder associations and plantation companies, found that almost five years after the enactment of the law, the rules requiring plantation companies to develop smallholders have hardly been implemented because of the absence of implementation regulations and overlapping as well as conflicting rules of other ministries.

[Vietnam] Binh Thuan makes efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions
Vietnam Plus, 28 December 2018
The south central coastal province of Binh Thuan is implementing the United Nations’ “Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation” (UN-REDD) project funded by the Norwegian Government in 41 communes of seven districts.
The project is expected to bring other benefits to the province such as reducing poverty reduction, restructuring the forestry sector, and conserving biodiversity, heard a conference held on December 27 by the provincial Department of Agriculture and Rural Development.

29 December 2018

30 December 2018

How vulnerable nations can profit from carbon sinks
By Rose Hassan, Daily Nation, 30 December 2018
On August 21, 1986, an event that has baffled scientists for years happened — a limnic eruption at Lake Nyos in northwestern Cameroon killed 1,746 people and 3,500 livestock.
A limnic eruption, also called a lake overturn, is a rare type of natural disaster in which a huge column of carbon dioxide rises from a water body at incredible speeds and, being heavier, it falls back with devastating consequences, choking all life forms within a huge radius.
Well, if you are curious about the phenomenon, you can try and give a carbonated drink a serious shake and then open the lid. Imagine that happening on a scale 100 million times larger.

The biggest rainforest news stories in 2018
By Rhett A. Butler, Mongabay, 30 December 2018
2018 was a difficult year for the world’s tropical rainforests. Below are of some of the biggest rainforest storylines for the year, but we couldn’t cover everything, so if there are important things missing, feel free to add them via the comment function at the bottom.

Published

REDDisms:

“[L]ocal communities, including forest-dependent indigenous people, particularly in Central Sulawesi, [have] arranged initiatives related to REDD plus issues, showing an increased awareness of the importance of good management of forests and wise use of forest resources as part of global efforts to fight climate change.”